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Constitution Day—2016


dream_weaver

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gullivers-travels.jpg

I found this graphic on the What Would The Founders Think website. I'm not advocating the website, just giving credit for where I discovered a graphic that best captured the aspect of binding the potential role of a threat government historically played.

The constitution was signed 229 years ago. Another graphic I saw stated "Constitution=Laws for government." Another way I've heard it stated is: The people are free to do what isn't explicitly prohibited by the constitution and laws derived thereof, where the government is only permitted to do what is expressly permitted by the constitution. While not exact, this does capture the spirit of the intent.

In this illustration, Gulliver—as a metaphor for government—has been bound by the Lilliputians—a metaphor for the people. (Metaphor's only per the graphic. I've not read Jonathan Swift's book.) Safely bound, the Lilliputians are free to go about living their lives. The Lilliputians are a benevolent people. As such, they ensure that Gulliver is fed, but pay no heed to his claims that he means them no harm, and leave him bound.

As generations go by, the Lilliputian, still being benevolent, instead of feeding immortal Gulliver themselves, send their children to feed Gulliver in their stead. Gulliver, cognizant of the transition, distracts the children from his decaying restraints by telling them how he had the power to take care of their every need and want. At first, alarmed, the adults came to check out the situation, but finding the restraints secure to their satisfaction, wrote it off to the story about the Little Boy Who Cried Wolf. 

Gulliver changed his tales as to not raise any alarm, and the children continued to come feed and listen to the consummate storyteller teller while new generations of adults, enamored with the relatively recent release of J.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings", fell into the cycle of "some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth. And for two and a half [hundred] years . . ."

 

Mark Scott was a former U.S. Marine, and openly flew his flag up-side-down as a declaration that the ship of state was in distress. Atlas Shrugged was a wake-up call by Ayn Rand as a means of diverting as what she saw as an inevitable decay of philosophy by those not willing to recognize dire need for philosophy to be taken as a serious influence in the state of world affairs.

The mind, on strike, was not just a concrete example of individuals quitting a world that refused to recognize their worth It is the prediction of a likely consequence of individuals that have relinquished their minds to the prevailing philosophic influences, and are unable to act as a Wyatt, Rearden, or Taggart, etc.,  much less as a d'Anconia, Danneskjöld, or Galt today.

 

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